1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to railroad track maintenance equipment, and more particularly, to an adjustable mounting system for an adzer used in re-laying railroad tracks.
2. Technical Background
A common machine used in the process of replacing rails of a railroad track is a railroad adzer machine that has a tie adzer. Over a period of time, as trains pass along the rails of a railroad track, the weight of the trains pressing on the rails causes the tie plates, which support the rails, to cut a recess area in the top of the crossties. When an old rail has been removed, and the tie plates are taken up, the old spike holes in the crossties are plugged. It is necessary to adze a smooth surface on the crossties before the tie plates are reinstalled. The tie adzer machine has a cutterhead assembly that planes the surface on each crosstie where the tie plates will sit.
As a tie adzer works along the track bed adzing the tie plate area, one side of the machine is supported by rail wheels running on the rail that is still in place. The other side of the machine is typically supported by crawler assemblies, since there is no rail in place for support. These crawler assemblies normally provide the motive power to move the machine along the track bed. A typical arrangement is for these crawler assemblies to be positioned near the ends of the crossties. Since the elevation of the crossties near their ends can vary considerably, the machine (and therefore the cutter head) tend to move up and down as the crawlers travel over the irregular crosstie ends. There is also the likelihood that ballast rocks may be on the crosstie ends, and when the crawlers travel over the rocks, this adds to the up and down movement. This means that the operator must maneuver the adzer cutterhead up and down to compensate for the machine's up and down movement to attain a smooth, consistent surface on the crossties.
On a typical tie adzer there is a support means for the cutterhead, a means to hydraulically raise and lower the cutterhead relative to the tie, and a means to manually adjust the cutterhead position transversely along the length of the tie. The cutterhead is raised for machine travel to and from the work site. For adzing, the cutterhead is lowered to the correct elevation to plane the tie surface. The ties are planed as the machine slowly moves along the track bed. It is sometimes necessary to adjust the cutterhead position transversely so that the adzer surface will be positioned correctly, dependent on the type of tie plate used. This transverse adjustment is a manual screw type adjustment, which is inconvenient, laborious, and time consuming. In addition, the support means for the cutterhead is inherently flexible on current machines and it is likely to bend. When this happens, it is difficult to keep the adzed surface of the ties in the same plane.
What is needed, therefore, is a means for powered transverse adjustment of the adzer, and a more stable support means.